In conjunction with the exhibition, “Shadow Play,” currently on view at the New Museum and particularly the screening of its centerpiece film, “Fly Paper,” critic at large Hilton Als profiled video artist, Kahlil Joseph for the November 6th issue of The New Yorker. Describing “Fly Paper,” as Joseph’s most personal film to date, Als reviews Joseph’s personal life and artistic background, including his work with Beyoncé for Lemonade and his friendship with cinematographer, Arthur Jafa.

“From the start, Joseph drew on distinctly American and African imagery to produce work in which faces and bodies were the narrative. When he made music videos, the songs were used less to support the visuals than to provide a frame for them to bounce off or dismantle. In “Until the Quiet Comes,” a 2012 piece that he made for the experimental d.j. and musician Flying Lotus—Kara Walker included it in “Ruffneck Constructivists,” a significant show she curated at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, in 2014—we see several of the motifs that Joseph would revisit in “Lemonade”: the suspension and play of time and the fractured narrative, slow, illusory, and true.”

“the suspended aesthetics of Joseph’s film not only critique the specious task of representing blackness, they disrupt the cultural logics that are sustained—literally grounded—by blackness.” Read the full essay here.

Artist and cinematographer, Arthur Jafa has directed the debut video for the first-release and title track of JAY-Z’s 4:44. According to ArtNews the video is a collage much in the style of Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death, the work that Jafa showed last year at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and which he previewed in the spring of 2016 at the liquid blackness event “Can Blackness Be Loved” hosted at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. Jafa had previously worked with Beyoncéon elements of the “Formation” video and with Solange on the “Cranes in the Sky” video. A free preview of the video is available here and full viewing requires a Tidal subscription.

Artist and cinematographer, Bradford Young’s three channel video installation, REkOGNIZE is on view at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh now until December 31. As described on Carnegie Museum’s website, REkOGNIZE features Young’s footage of the Hill District, shots of Pittsburgh’s tunnels, and a translation of several Teenie Harris photographs into matrices of metadata. This digital code is also the basis for the work’s musical score by jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran. Read more here.

Bradford Young’s directorial debut, Black America Again was awarded at the Los Angeles Film Festival as best short documentary. The short film was produced by Ava DuVernay, who Young previously worked with as cinematographer for Selma. The film stars Common who also provided the music for the film. Described as “a visual celebration of the beauty, strength, perseverance and spirit of the black community in these troubling times,” watch Black America Again below.

The New Yorker recently published, “The Profound Power of the New Solange Videos.” The article establishes a lineage similar to that of the work of liquid blackness by looking at the role of Arthur Jafa in Solange’s new work and how that is in conversation with his work with Julie Dash, and by extension, Beyonce’s “Lemonade” and the work of Kahlil Joseph. It also highlights the importance of the music video format and gestures towards a sort of liquid black aesthetic visible in the work of Japanese-American video director, Hiro Murai. Read the full article here.